IT’S NICE TO BE NICE

Growing up as a wayward Presbyterian, if you had asked me my exact thoughts on Methodists, I would have told you “they’re nice.”

Nice.

As my mother would say, there’s no damning like faint praise.

There is a bit of truth in the niceness of Methodists, though. We are a denomination that is predicated on gathering rather than separating. John Wesley did not seek to create a new branch of the church. Rather, he wanted to show the world a way of being a Christian that found its roots in doing.

However, I fear that our propensity toward inclusion has fermented in some circles such that it has become a reticence to make anyone uncomfortable.

“We don’t talk about those things in church. We wouldn’t want anyone to feel bad. It wouldn’t be nice.”

And that’s a real shame, because having the difficult conversations, especially in worship, is a fundamentally Methodist thing to do. It might surprise you to learn that the United Methodist Church has taken a stand on basically all of the hot-button issues of the day. You can find them in the Social Principles in our Book of Discipline.

AND, you may also be shocked to learn that we’re absolutely supposed to talk about these things in worship as part of our proclamation of the Gospel. The Book of Discipline distills our Social Principles into both Social Creed and a Companion Litany advising us to make both available at all times and to be used frequently in worship. You can read them at https://www.umc.org/en/content/our-social-creed.

As Methodists, we believe that fighting for basic human rights for all is Kingdom work. Speaking truth to power is a holy mission. Standing up for the oppressed, the stranger, and the down-trodden fundamentally is the work of the church. And as such, worship is a place to talk about it.

I hope you take a moment to read Our Social Creed and its companion litany today. It makes me proud to have become a Methodist. Though, my Presbyterian family thought I was predestined for this sort of thing, anyway.